File Release Notes and Changelog
Release Name: 1.5.0
Notes:
IMPORTANT NOTE(S)
GENTLE IS NO LONGER OFFICIALLY MAINTAINED (but I will offer commercial
support if anyone dares to use it in spite of this warning).
This release is a wrap-up release with bugfixes and improvements made since
1.2.9 was released in the summer of 2006.
Existing users: Please be sure to at least review the BREAKING CHANGES,
DOCUMENTATION, SOURCE CODE and CONTRIBUTORS sections below.
BREAKING CHANGES
Gentle 1.5.0 has been ported/upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 and the code base
now requires .NET 2.0 to run.
There are new generic accessors on the Broker, PersistenceBroker, Transaction
and ObjectFactory classes. For consistency, old methods returning ArrayList
instances have been upgraded to return generic List<T> instances (like the
new generic list access methods). This will break existing code if you
downcast the IList return type to ArrayList.
I've updated provider libraries for SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird and
DB2 to the most recent ones available. No code changes apart from namespace
updates were required to do this. However, these changes remain untested and
might therefore introduce bugs or exhibit modified behavior compared to the
much older versions.
Please review the CHANGELOG for a more complete overview of changes.
DOCUMENTATION
The wiki and issue tracker are currently offline, with no immediate plans to
restore them as they were. The best learning resources for Gentle are
therefore bundled with this release. The Documentation folder contains a PDF
export of the original Wiki content along with API documentation for Gentle
itself.
If someone wants to host the Wiki I'll be happy to supply the appropriate
database backups (PostgreSQL dump files) and license files for restoring the
original content. I might also have Confluence XML backups that are database
independant but would need to investigate whether that is the case.
SOURCE CODE
The source code is currently available at the following URL:
https://code.mertner.com:8443/svn/gentle/gentle/
Note that this URL might change in the future, although I'll try to keep it
around if possible. If you want a copy of the source and cannot find it, feel
free to email me at morten@mertner.com
The project home remains at SourceForge, where you can download the current
release as well as access the support forums. Due to spammer abuse all
mailing list messages are moderated, and most likely I'll soon close down the
mailing list facility altogether.
http://sf.net/projects/gopf
SUPPORT
If you are using Gentle and would like commercial support, please contact me
through my business email at morten.mertner@codeworks.eu
You are also welcome to try the SourceForge forums - people have generally
been very helpful and patient in helping to resolve other peoples issues.
UPGRADING
Please review the CHANGELOG entries added since the version you are using and
apply any changes as needed. If you find a "breaking" entry that is not
listed in the CHANGELOG, please let me know so I can fix it.
INSTALLATION
Please review the included documentation first, in particular the Getting
Started and Using Gentle pages.
You can find sample configuration files in the Configuration folder. You must
use either a standalone Gentle.config or declare a section in App/Web.config.
Please also remember to uncomment the provider libraries you wish to use,
make sure to reference them from your project so that they get copied to the
bin folder, and to set a valid connectionString property for the
DefaultProvider tag in the configuration file.
VS.NET HELP INTEGRATION
Execute the register.bat file found in the Documentation/Help subfolder. This
will install the included .HxS and .HxC help files, which will provide you with
context-sensitive help lookup from within Visual Studio.
You will need the tools H2Reg and MS VS.NET Help Integration Kit. If you do not
have these tools, please visit the following link to learn about their use and
where to obtain them: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/VSHelpIntegration.asp
COMPILING GENTLE
You need Visual Studio 2008 or a compatible version of a build tool to compile
Gentle. No precompilation steps should be necessary.
You will also need to download and install the Microsoft Oracle Client in
order to compile the Gentle.Provider.Oracle project.
RUNNING THE TESTS
You can find either database creation scripts or prepared database files for
most of the databases supported below the Source/Gentle.Framework/Tests folder.
Use these if you wish to run any of the included test cases.
CODE GENERATORS
Gentle is supported by both MyGeneration (http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com)
and CodeSmith, two excellent template-based code generation tools. Both of
these tools are able to generate a Gentle prepared business object from an
existing database schema.
MyGeneration comes bundled with a Gentle.NET template and is the recommended
tool to use (the template offers the most features, is actively maintained,
works with the most database engines, and is able to generate code for an
entire database schema in one go). Use it, and create a complete Gentle-enabled
data-access layer in less than a minute!
CONTRIBUTORS
Gentle was originally created by Morten Mertner and released as open source
in january 2004. It was actively maintained for almost 3 years after the
initial release date culminating in a mature product with the 1.2.9 release
in november 2006.
After this attention switched to producing a new version with fewer limitations
and better overall design. This task progressed at an ever slower pace as the
task proved to be fairly difficult and much too large for a single person to
overcome, and it was hard to maintain the belief that the effort was worthwhile
given that all the interest was focused on LINQ and competing ORM products.
Much code has been written and the source for Gentle 2.0 remains available if
anyone wants to tinker with it (it might not compile currently though).
At this time I would like to extend a very special thanks to everybody who
has been on board and helped out over the years, whether by answering forum
posts, contributing code, reporting bugfixes or even just moral support.
I'll not mention any names so as not to forget anybody, but you know who you
are!
I'd also like to thank all of the "Gentle fans" who have praised the ease
of use, stability or performance of Gentle over the years. Without these
the project would never have made it as fas as it did.
LICENSE
This library has been released under the GNU LGPL 2.1. Please see the
full license text located in the file Documentation/license.txt.
SPONSORS
Gentle is kindly being sponsored by the following organisations:
Atlassian (http://www.atlassian.com) has provided free open-source licenses to
their issue tracker JIRA and the "wiki-on-steroids" collaboration tool Confluence.
Apart from being outstanding tools I can also personally confirm that their email
support rocks!
Kayako (http://www.kayako.com) has provided a free license to their excellent
HelpDesk software. Note that while the software itself was excellent, the support
volume for Gentle in the end did not warrant the use of the software.
Cenqua (http://www.cenqua.com) has granted a license for their source code
repository browser FishEye.
*Thanks* for supporting Gentle, and the open source movement in general!
CREDITS
This library uses code written by third parties - my personal thanks to
them all for their efforts!
Npgsql is Copyright © 2002 The Npgsql Development Team.
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/npgsql/projdisplay.php
Firebird provider is copyright 2002 Carlos Guzmán Álvarez.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/firebird.netdataprovider
The MySQL library is Copyright © MySQL AB.
http://www.mysql.com/
Thanks also to Mono team for use of the SQLite and SybaseAsa data providers.
A major undertaking with a bright future!
http://www.go-mono.com
The excellent MbUnit test framework is Copyright © Jonathan de Halleux
http://www.mbunit.org (also see http://www.mertner.com/confluence/mbunit)
The log4net/Apache people require a specific greeting, and it goes like this:
"This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation
(http://www.apache.org/).".
Changes:
This file is a summary of the actual changes. Please consult the repository history
features for a full historical record of the changes.
For a complete list of changes between any two releases, execute the Subversion command
svn log -r <start>:<end> http://www.mertner.com/svn/gentle/gentle
where <start> and <end> are the revisions to include in the output. Recent releases
have their revision spans marked below (listed after the version number).
CHANGELOG
2008-03-14 [v1.5.0] [1043:1237]
This release is a wrap-up release with bugfixes and improvements made
to Gentle since the last release. The project has been updated to use
and support generics and can therefore no longer be used with .NET 1.1.
The NullableType<T> structure should be supported, although this remains
largely untested. Most provider libraries have been updated to recent
releases. IPersistent has been refactored to use a bade interface IEntity
that makes it easier to use Gentle in repository-style DALs.
Note that Visual Studio 2008 is required for opening the project files.
[v1.2.9] [974:1042]
2006-06-06 This release features a complete rewrite of the cache subsystem
with significant performance improvements as a result. There have
also been several minor improvements and bugfixes throughout the
code base.
[v1.2.8] [930:973]
2006-03-04 This release fixes a number of bugs throughout the library, and contains
updated provider libraries for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird and Sybase.
Upgrading users should note that the namespace for TypedArrayItemBase has
changed to Gentle.Framework. A preliminary provider library for DB2 has
been added (helpers wanted for completing the implementation). Also note
that the source repository has moved to a new URL (see above).
[v1.2.7] [870:929]
2005-12-05 This release features improved performance and better transaction support.
Logging has been cleaned up and is now fully categorized. NullValue can
now be used with Guids. There have been improvements to the Firebird,
MySQL and Oracle providers, and the log4net library has been updated.
There have also been a number of general bugfixes and improvements.
[v1.2.6] [821:869]
2005-10-10 This release fixes a range of bugs and annoyances throughout the code.
Improvements have been made to inheritance mapping, validation, and
logging. Gentle now checks that missing provider libraries are
referenced before complaining.
[v1.2.5] [803:820]
2005-07-16 This release fixes a bug introduced in 1.2.4 affecting the configuration
subsystem. Error reporting and the cache subsystem have been improved.
[v1.2.4] [762:802]
2005-07-08 This release adds working SQLite support, and contains important
improvements to the configuration and caching subsystems. A vast number
of minor issues have been resolved.
[v1.2.3] [730:761]
2005-05-08 This release features improved error reporting, and corrects a large
number of minor issues. An exception is now thrown for missing provider
libraries defined in the config file.
[v1.2.2] [717:729]
2005-04-04 This release fixes a bug introduced in 1.2.1 affecting reserved word
handling. A bug affecting concurrency handling when using unnamed
parameters was fixed.
[v1.2.1] [630:716]
2005-03-31 This release adds a validation subsystem, as well as numerous
improvements throughout. There have been critical bugfixes to
core components; existing users should upgrade. Gentle is now
CLS compliant, and Mono (1.1.4+) is fully supported.
[v1.2.0]
2005-02-12 This release adds a provider for SQL Server CE, and improvements to the
configuration subsystem, error reporting, and various other components.
A bug affecting the use of multiple brokers has been fixed. MySQL users
should upgrade due to critical bugs in the MySQL library shipped with
previous versions.
[v1.1.3]
2004-12-31 This release adds an improved configuration subsystem, and contains a
large number of fixes and improvements affecting reserved word handling,
serialization, database analysis, transactions, and more.
[v1.1.2]
2004-10-25 This release contains a number of minor bugfixes and improvements. To
compile Gentle from source you must first register the key used to sign
the assembly in the CSP (see the README for additional info on this).
[v1.1.1]
2004-07-04 This release contains bugfixes and performance improvements.
[v1.1.0]
2004-06-21 This release adds dynamic loading of provider libraries, automatic lowest
cost constructor selection, vastly improved transaction handling, a
completely reworked configuration file handler, support for decorating
private members, and many other improvements. There have been many fixes
for Jet/Access, Firebird, MySQL and Sybase users. Please refer to the
readme file for detailed upgrade instructions.
[v1.0.4]
2004-05-17 This release adds preliminary support for Sybase. Support for GUIDs in
SQL Server and BLOBs in both MySQL and SQL Server was added. Firebird
support has been vastly improved and there are a number of minor fixes
throughout.
[v1.0.3]
2004-04-28 Updated provider library and Firebird support files [Carlos]. There may
still be minor issues with Firebird but most testcases now run fine.
2004-04-25 Fixed a number of bugs in the MS Access and Firebird code. Various
improvements and fixes were applied to some of the core classes.
As of version 1.0.2 changes have been aggregated and are listed here with less detail.
[v1.0.2]
2004-04-22 Database script for SQLite added [ch].
2004-04-21 Added full support for Oracle access using the OracleODP provider [as].
2004-04-15 Fixed a bug that caused test cases to interact and fail when executed
all at once. If you encounter a failing test case try to run it on its
own before reporting a bug.
2004-04-14 Fixed a bug that prevented the same column from appearing multiple
times in the constraint list. Fixed a bug with paging and added test
cases for both issues.
2004-04-12 Added support for soft deleting objects with a concurrency column by
setting the concurrency value to -1. Rows marked with a concurrency
value of -1 will not be returned by any of the retrieve methods.
2004-04-11 Added support for dynamically specifying the table name (see the Key
class and ITableName interface for details on usage). Added support
for paging (Next/Previous) to SqlResult.
2004-04-09 Fixed a missing type conversion for Oracle users [Andreas Seibt,
Petrel].
[v1.0.1]
2004-04-08 Added support for generating a DataView from an SqlResult. The
analyzer for SQL Server now supports obtaining the identity columns.
Fixed a bug in SqlResult where column names would only be available
if rows were retrieved.
2004-04-05 Fixed a number of bugs that would prevent test cases from running if
concurrency control was disabled.
[v1.0.0]
2004-04-04 Added support for Enum properties (will be persisted as integers).
Introduced a new sample parent class (GentleBase) providing defaults
for the primary key field as well as concurrency control. Changed the
Member class to test the new base class.
2004-04-03 Added support for automatic concurrency control (update statements
only) using the ConcurrencyControlColumn attribute. Added a new
configuration key "Options/ConcurrencyControl" to allow Gentle to
ignore the concurrency attribute. Applied a number of minor fixes
kindly reported back by users.
[v0.9.9]
2004-03-21 Updated the UserRole test cases to not use reserved words and updated
the database scripts for all databases. Applied a number of fixes for
Oracle support [Andreas Siebt]. Various minor fixes throughout.
2004-03-16 Fixed GentleList implementation [bugfixes; list content is no longer
touched for n:m relations (relation management only); objects in 1:n
lists are still managed]. Fixed a number of bugs for Oracle [Andreas
Siebt].
2004-03-14 Implemented list classes GentleList and GentleRelation for
automatic management of 1:n and n:m relations. Added testcases for
the Gentle list classes. Fixed a number of bugs affecting objects
with aggregated primary keys.
2004-03-13 Added support for Oracle [Andreas Siebt]. Minor bugfixes. Added
reserved word checking for MS SQL Server and MS Access.
2004-03-09 Renamed Config handler to GentleSectionHandler and the configuration
section name to "gentle". Fixed the Transaction class. Passing an
empty SqlResult to ObjectFactory.GetInstance now throws an error.
[v0.9.8]
2004-03-07 Added support for MS Access (Jet) [Vinicius (Vinny) A. DaSilva].
Added support for Firebird [Carlos Guzmán Álvarez]. Fixed a number
of bugs affecting MySQL and PostgreSQL users. Added support for
limit and offset clauses to the SqlBuilder.
2004-02-29 Implemented caching database metadata analyzer for SQL92 compliant
engines (replaces SqlServerAnalyzer for MS SQL Server). Updated the
NAnt build scripts [Clayton Harbour].
2004-02-26 Made ObjectMap.Construct return proper GentleExceptions. Fixed a
bug where DateTime.MinValue would always translate to null. Fixed
a bug causing Broker.Retrieve only to work when the Key contained
primary key field(s). Fixed compilation on Mono.
[v0.9.7]
2004-02-24 Fixed a bug introduced in 0.9.6 that broke all error reporting. Added
support for primary key detection to SqlServerAnalyzer. Added support
for using SqlResults as In/NotIn constraint input to SqlBuilder.
[v0.9.6]
2004-02-22 Merged changes to use log4net for logging [Clayton Harbour]. Renamed
FrameworkException to GentleException and various minor code cleanups.
2004-02-16 Added support for row limit (TOP) and order by clauses to SqlBuilder.
Fixed a bug with property/column mapping [Clayton Harbour]. Fixed a
bug where SqlBuilder in some cases would generate illegal sql for
Operator.Equals. Added support for Operator.NotEquals.
[v0.9.5]
2004-02-15 Added support for Operator.In and Operator.NotIn constraints using
an ArrayList of data elements and property name. Generalized the
test cases for SQL factory verification to be provider independent.
2004-02-14 Added fix for DateTime null handling (now works without setting
DefaultValue). Added missing Error declarations and corresponding
external message definitions.
[v0.9.4]
2004-02-09 Added partial metadata extraction for PostgreSQL.
2004-02-08 Implemented support for transactions.
2004-02-06 Added automatic metadata extraction support for MySQL. Added
proper handling of null values, as well as string and datetime
clipping for invalid values. Some code cleanup and fixes.
[v0.9.3]
2004-02-04 Added support for extracting field type/size information
from the system tables (MS SQL Server only, for now).
Improved the SqlResult and SqlStatement classes with a bunch
of convenience methods. Various minor improvements and fixes.
2004-02-03 Extended TableColumn to allow specification of DbType, Size
and DefaultValue. Added support for the new TableColumn properties
throughout the framework.
[v0.9.2]
2004-02-02 Added support for converting between business objects and
DataViews. Use the new CustomView attribute to declare views.
2004-02-01 Started work on object caching using Michael Bouck's cache
class. Use the TableName attribute to set caching strategy
per type. Also started work on ObjectGraph for automatic
join resolution.
2004-01-31 Added a bunch of data accessor methods to the SqlResult class.
2004-01-30 Fixed the problem with the ByteFX MySQL provider. Added support
for translating foreign key columns using the ForeignKey
attribute.
[v0.9.1]
2004-01-27 Added MySQL and SQLite support. The ByteFX provider for
MySQL appears to be broken. SQLite is yet untested.
2004-01-25 Publishing of errors to the Windows event log no longer uses
the ExceptionManagement libraries (dependency removed).
Reworked some of the Config file handling.
[v0.9.0]
2004-01-21 Initial source code release.
